Organization

Some organizations work. They accomplish what they set out to do and their employees are engaged and happy with their jobs. Yet Bain research indicates that only 20 percent of companies achieve that. Bain helps clients improve financial performance and make their organizations better places to work by ensuring the entire organization system is aligned and set up to deliver on the company's objectives.

Bain has a comprehensive tool kit to help companies address decision difficulties and other organizational barriers to performance. We have completed more than 2,000 organizational assignments in the last five years, spanning every major industry and geographic region. Our areas of expertise include:

Organization Diagnostic: Organizational Navigator. Bain's diagnostic tool to help clients assess and identify how to improve their organizational performance. It helps companies determine where their organization is strong, where it is weak and, most critically, which outcomes matter most for generating superior business performance.

Organizational design and operating model. A well-designed operating model provides a clear and consistent blueprint for how resources are organized and operated to achieve a company's strategic priorities. We partner with clients to help them design and implement operating models that translate strategy into effective execution.

Organization Simplification. Organizational complexity is the new normal, driven by growth, globalization and disruptive technologies; properly addressing it requires time and focus. Our holistic approach helps companies identify and simultaneously address the fundamental drivers of complexity to ensure that its symptoms don't creep back.

Decision effectiveness. Bain's five-step program, described in our book Decide & Deliver, helps you identify key decisions, X-ray each one to determine problem areas and reset those decisions for maximum effectiveness. It helps you strengthen weak elements of the organization and embed good decision making and execution in your everyday operations.

Role of the center. Examining the role of the center helps CEOs of companies with ineffectual structures determine the best organizational model for their firm. Centers must be "fit for purpose," with roles aligned to the company's business profile, strategy and leadership style. That means there is no pat formula. Our focus is on value added: Effectiveness is 90 percent of the game—making sure the right decisions get made by the right people at the right time. Efficiency is critical but secondary.

Talent management and leadership supply. No company can turn in a great performance without great people. High performers learn to assess their talent pipeline, deploy their most promising people more effectively in critical decision areas and reduce their demand for scarce skills.

Measures and incentives. Bain helps companies create dynamic performance measurement with a focus on what really matters to the business. We build dashboards that serve as barometers of ongoing business performance, and help companies devise tailored compensation systems that will reward actions and behaviors that advance the organization's goals and drive decision effectiveness.

High-performance culture. Company culture is at the heart of competitive advantage, because it determines how things are done and how people behave. It is the hardest thing for competitors to copy. High performers create an environment with a unique personality and a passion for performance—so that people make the right decisions and do the right thing wherever they are in the business.

Change management. Change is tough and always has been. Organizational change is a particularly emotional process—often a source of tension and insecurity. "Will I still have a job?" "What will it be?" We help companies account for these sensitivities with clear communications and solid engagement plans to motivate people. Our approach draws from experiential learning about what actions make change stick. We help deliver "quick wins" by anchoring change in customer and marketplace needs and by tackling changes in parallel, and enduring success by building organization alignment and avoiding ambiguity around critical roles and decision processes. Learn more about Bain’s Results Delivery practice.

Additional areas of expertise:

Leadership behaviors and alignment. Leadership behaviors are one of the critical "soft" elements that research shows are most important in determining an organization's decision effectiveness and thus its performance. Sometimes, however, a company's leadership behaviors and decision style will have to change—adapting to a different strategy or the arrival of new leaders, for example. The key to changing behaviors is reaching agreement on the desired decision style, and then defining and demonstrating the required behaviors.

Management process redesign. Well-executed critical management processes are essential to a company's performance. Bain's practical, structured approach to management processes oils the decision-making machinery to drive faster, better decisions, more productive meetings and efficient execution. We work with clients to develop tailored management practices and build the skills and behaviors that lead to enduring results.

Shared services

People engagement

Our perspective

An effective organization can give companies the edge that sets them apart from the competition. The payoff can be significant: Our research has shown that high performers report total shareholder returns nearly six percentage points higher and their employees are far more likely to recommend the company as a place to work—a powerful indicator of engagement. The secret: decisions. The best performers make better decisions, make them more quickly and execute them more effectively. And they don't spend too much or too little effort in the process.

Bain has a comprehensive tool kit and team of global experts to help companies break down organizational barriers and address decision inefficiencies to get to high performance. Working jointly with our clients, we start with a focus on which decisions matter most to overall performance. Small, everyday decisions can matter as much as big strategic ones. We then build integrated organizational systems that are explicitly geared to support these key decisions. We go beyond the "hard" issues of structure, roles and processes to addresses the "soft" elements such as people, behaviors and culture.

Our ultimate objective is to embed new capabilities and repeatable processes so that people at all levels can decide and deliver, again and again.

Client results

We share our clients' ambitions. We work to understand their reality and deliver true results—focusing on strategic decisions and practical actions. And we align our incentives with our clients' objectives, so they know we're in it together.

We develop insights that work for our clients. Our approach and recommendations are highly customized and lead to practical actions. Visit Bain Insights to read more, or stay current on the topics you care about most by downloading the Bain Insights app today.

We work as an integrated part of your team, from frontline to C-suite, to deliver true results and make the changes stick.
We have a core group of senior organization focused experts that we deploy across the globe. Bain has completed more than 2,000 organizational projects in the last five years, spanning every major industry.